A.K.A. Corleone

A.K.A. Corleone is the creative alter-ego of Pedro Campiche , a young designer and a “struggling to be a full-time” illustrator. He has developed projects from Lisbon, Caldas da Rainha and Barcelona, and participated in exhibitions in London and Brussels. Being a very promising emerging talent, we thought he had some facts to reveal about his path and his aspirations … and we tought right, he had a lot of things to say. Here’s an exclusive interview of A.K.A. Corleone:

Hello A.K.A. Corleone, you are now in Barcelona, the capital of Graphic Design and Illustration. You felt you had to change in order to evolve, you think that staying in Portugal would have made your career less interesting?
Well, actually my coming to Barcelona was a bit of a twist of fate, because it has always been a city that fascinated me and i want to live and work here one day , and lately i wanted to try something new, fleeing off Lisbon. This last year i moved to Caldas da Rainha where i started some projects of great interest, and suddenly, i won an internship in Barcelona, wich is obviously a great opportunity, but i felt like a soldier drafted into the war, hahah ! I continue to have many projects in Portugal, because I think about getting back soon, but at this stage i´m trying to absorb everything i can from this great city, meet new designers and artists, make contacts, work as much as possible and stir me to make things happen! I believe that this “accident ” has brought me many opportunities, i am discovering a new reality in the world of illustration and design which i think is helping me to develop my work and projecting me in a different market of the portuguese one, wich is very limited.

You decided to take on a freelance career. You think it might be more interesting than integrating a studio or an agency and do what you’re asked to do?
Over the past two years i worked as a designer in studios, and i still do . At the moment my career as a freelance is nocturnal: during the day i’m Clark Kent, from 9 to 5, and at night i’m a super illustrator who fights crime with markers and a moleskine! I am trying to make the transition to full-time freelancer in the first place, because my goal is to work as an illustrator (always trying to do some design work that fascinates me) and i feel that the work i develop in design studios sucks all my the creativity, or lacks of ambition, or customers do not want anything new or simply because in Portugal there is no market for what i like to do. This transition will not be simple, i will lose the stability of a steady job, but i am a little anti-agency, i feel it is slave labor, we are constantly being exploited, and unhappy doing work that does not motivate us… I feel it’s time to try making this jump because fortunately i´m starting to receive briefings that suits my style, people seeking me for my work. I also found a dynamic new gallery in Caldas da Rainha, the “Seres”, which is an old factory turned into open spaces, accessible to young creatives, where we share space with artists, photographers, designers, etc … this gallery allows me to work involved in a spirit of mutual aid and creativity that motivates me a lot … I think above all i still have this utopian thinking that we can be happy working on that we like best, then i feel it’s time to try this approach !

Do you feel that your training in Portugal, as a professional creative, has prepared you to be entrepreneurial and autonomous?
My academic training did not prepare me to cut the labor market, i was fortunate to have two teachers that motivated me to follow an alternative path to the college -agency – mortgage one, and look for something different, but everything else i learned comes from my experience of constant work, nothing prepares me to deal with customers without vision, studios unwilling to innovate, critics who only know how to bring us down … I believe we are masters of our destiny, and to achieve what we want, we have to fight hard, searching for clients, win visibilty, creating opportunities. You can let others do it for you, but you end up doing what others want, not what you aim for.

What makes your eyes gleam: having the opportunity to design a series of posters with your name and your own style, and commercialize them, or be commissioned to make a poster for a product, which you have to interpret? Think that there are differences?
There are always differences, because for a product you have to follow a pre-existing concept, to adapt it to your language, and this can be a very interesting challenge, but you also can be forced by the client to take a certain direction that is contrary to what you imagined in the first place, to you original concept, and then the story becomes more complicated …
When I do personal work, it´s as i was trying to swim in a bathtub, and then being dropped off at sea, lol (I love my metaphors) feeling free to create something without rules is fascinating, to develop something that is really what I do, without constraints or budgets or last minute changes, but it can also be difficult not having the challenge of adapting my work to a foreign concept, i like this challenge … it also becomes tricky when i’m my “boss ” because i’m very self-critical, and when i make personal work i am very demanding with myself …

You like to apply your work to other physical media beyond paper. Think you’d like to be creative in other vehicles, such as photography, video, making music, writing …?

I have a thousand evil plans to work on media and techniques with which i do not usually deal with, more and more i feel the need to do different things, the basic aim is always to get away from the computer.I love the computer but in time i increasingly want to work manually, either with sprays, diferent printing techniques, photography, many things. I have a huge desire to experiment, which is why i also make an effort to always find the time and willingness to do personal work, experimental, always looking for originality . I want to look at my work and see a path and an evolution, and not to find a formula and repeat it, i want to learn and improve!

If you were not an illustrator, what would you be?
When i was a kid, i wanted to be a Benfica (the football team) player, but quickly realized that this dream was not for me, from then i realized i wanted to work in a creative field, i think a lot about it, i can not imagine a non-artistic area, i have no talent or padding to something else … maybe a teacher, when i´ll have a career that i’m proud of and something that i can teach. I support the transition of knowledge to the next generation, it irritates me that some professionals keep their knowledge as a secret, fearing that others may find those secrets, making them somewhat obsolete … i do not understand. Ah, i still also believe that one day I will be the best semi-pro ping-pong player of the planet.